


But Tonight

by wishesgoverybad



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood!Kink, End!verse, Hair-pulling, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 07:48:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishesgoverybad/pseuds/wishesgoverybad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's The End, baby. Why not bang a few gongs before the lights go out?</p>
            </blockquote>





	But Tonight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [destielicious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/destielicious/gifts).



> I wrote this for destielicious and tried to hit her kinks as best I could.

Castiel’s eyes narrow as Dean shuffles through the door, feet dragging.  He moves tenderly, the way he does when he’s been in a fight.  Castiel supposes that’s the way he always moves these days.

 

It’s late and Dean expects Cas to be passed out in a mass of woolen blankets that smell like mildew.  It doesn’t matter that the single light bulb still glows in his cabin, Castiel frequently passes out without finishing any of the pleasantries of the day--turning off lights, putting away a half eaten can of beans, taking off his shoes, whatever.  Castiel expects Dean to do these things, expects Dean to attend to these small details in addition to all the larger responsibilities because within these walls, beneath Castiel’s light bulb, Dean is not a fearless leader.  He’s just Dean, and Castiel demands respect.

 

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel says from the bed and he enjoys the way Dean startles, rocks instinctively into a fighting stance before he relaxes and steps into the light.  Castiel can see the blood, now.  It’s trickled through hair and down the side of his face.  Dean’s hands are covered in it, as usual, and his pants are torn, wet, blood dripping on his shoes.

 

“It’s not all mine,” Dean says with a smirk, a hand lifting wearily, self-consciously touching his ear and raking his fingers through gummy, sanguine hair.  He winces and sighs and Castiel understands that they lost many men.  More than Dean planned.  Many more than Dean wanted.

 

Castiel never knows what to make of their arrangement.  It’s irregular but enduring.  It’s different than what he wants or what he’d choose, but in these moments, with Dean looking at the floor, head bowed like a dog who’s misbehaved Castiel knows that Dean needs this.  He needs someone else to be in charge sometimes.  He needs someone to take care of him.  And in the end, that’s all that matters.

 

On nights like these, Castiel knows Dean likes to be fucked senseless, face in the pillow, Castiel’s hand pressing him down until his hands leave marks and Dean stops thinking, stops feeling.  Castiel knows this is Dean’s drug, knows this keeps Dean from spiraling like Castiel himself has. And Castiel enjoys it, he does.  His nights with Dean, especially the rough ones, are some of the only times he feels like he has any power at all.  And Castiel loves the feel of himself inside Dean, loves the uncomfortable burn of their skin and hair as they rub together.  Loves that Dean trusts only Castiel with the care of his soul.  What little he has left.

 

Tonight, though, Castiel can’t imagine it.  Dean’s face is gray under the shock of red, his eyes empty and angry and whether he knows it or not, he needs something besides more pain, so Castiel casts off a blanket fraying at the ends and ignores the shiver that trills through him when his bare feet meet the cold of the cabin floor.  He approaches slowly, wondering what to do next.  Dean can’t abide pity, or softness, or most things these days.  Not since Sam.  So, Castiel will have to be firm and gentle and he doesn’t know how to communicate that, so he’s silent until he’s crossed the floor and stands in front of him.  Then he reaches out a hand and grabs a shoulder, his own fingers pinched with the pressure of his grip.

 

“Go sit on the bed,” he says and the rumble of his own voice startles him.  He savors the stroke of it inside his chest and wonders if this might be easier than he’d imagined.

 

Dean casts a spiteful look toward Castiel, but his steps stutter forward and he slumps on the edge of the thin mattress, rolling his shoulders as he does so, relishing the pop they make.  Castiel imagines himself fisting Dean’s hair, still sticky with blood, imagines pulling Dean further into the wince.  Dean would bite his lower lip, already split and mottled, and he would set his jaw and stare directly into Castiel’s’ eyes, daring him to do more.  And Castiel would oblige.  This is how the story plays out most nights.

 

But tonight, Cas drops to his knees and unlaces heavy boots.  He slides them off, removes the sheath for the knife Deen keeps tucked awkwardly against an ankle.  And then he allows his hands to spider crawl up Dean’s leg until they hit the heavy canvas of his holster.  It’s scratched and caked with mud and when Castiel unfastens it, Dean makes a noise that could be a sigh or a groan.  Castiel tosses it to the floor and looks down to his own hands shining and red.  He spots the gash hidden in folds of fabric and the black of already dried blood.  It’s not bad, and Castiel guesses it’s from a knife, the denim catching most of the blade, before Dean did whatever he had to do.  Castiel’s hands fumble to Dean’s waist and Dean tenses when his fingers reach his fly.  Dean tries to push away, tries to stand because by now he’s figured out that Castiel will not give in and pound him like another nail in his coffin.  So Castiel pretends he still has wings, pretends his eyes can still glow with the fury of something greater than them all and Dean freezes and half swallows at the look Castiel’s face has arranged onto itself and though the joints where his wings should be ache with hollowness, Castiel feels suddenly warm, because he knows in this moment Dean is where he belongs.  Castiel has lost much, and he was never truly omnipotent, but in this corner of a cabin in a world on the brink of extinction, he’s not impotent.  Here he is not powerless.

 

He undoes the buckle of Dean’s belt and grates the zipper downward, letting his fingers catch on the metal teeth.  He’s still staring at Dean with eyes that burn a deep flush into the hunter’s neck, but Dean won’t meet his gaze.  Instead, he stares at his hand, flexes it into a loose fist and watches as rusty blood flakes and cracks against the lines of his hand.  He’s thinking of someone they lost tonight, thinking of the look in his eyes when he knew he’d turn, thinking of the look on his wife’s face when Dean told her what had happened, trying too hard to remember his name.  This will not do, Castiel decides, because Dean shouldn’t be thinking, so he taps him on the chin and forces him to look, forces him to ruck his hips so Castiel can jerk his pants off, heedless of the way the blood from the cut on Dean’s leg sticks to the fabric until Dean’s breath catches back his yelp of surprise.  It’s then that Castiel becomes gentle, easing Dean’s feet out of the last of the pant leg and then palming the skin on either side of the cut, feeling the warmth of Dean’s inner thigh trickle into his hand and if he pressed he’d hear Dean suck in a ragged breath and they could move back into routine.

 

But tonight, Castiel won’t do this.  Tonight he leans forward and kisses the gash, furious and dark, lets his dry, pale lips become red and moist against the blood that wells up at the pressure.  He makes his tongue wide and soft, rolls the taste of iron through his mouth as he laps the surrounding skin and falls into the sound of Dean’s labored exhalations.

 

Castiel moves to the other thigh, a collage of partially healed bruises, green and yellowed with time, now hidden under the dark purple of fresh ones.  He presses his tongue and lips to their edges and ignores the stamp his reddened lips leave against the skin.  This is about cherishing Dean, about reclaiming his body from gore and violence, but who can blame Castiel for sucking a fold of skin between his mouth?  Who can blame him for leaving shadows of his ministrations nipped into still tender skin?  

 

An eternity and not so long ago, Castiel could erase these marks, could heal Dean with the brush of his fingertips, but that time is past.  Castiel knows he cannot undo what has been done, so he writes over the stories these wounds tell, covers them with concern and devotion and the occasional addition of a mouth-shaped blemish.  Dean utters a stillborn whimper, forces the cry back into his chest and arches, pressing his hips toward Castiel.  Castiel leans into the nudge of Dean’s cock, allows his tongue to wander northward, skipping slowly over the salt of unhealed wounds and the film of sweat that forms near his groin.  Castiel is purposeful, attentive, and Dean’s breath tears through his throat, gasping and forced, trailed with the whine of desire.  Castiel is almost ready to relent when l he feels a calloused hand wend through the mass of his hair and Dean tugs.

 

Castiel follows the force of movement, allows his own darkened eyes to catch Dean’s until Dean’s other hand, still filthy with blood, grabs behind Castiel’s ear and pulls him into a rough kiss, hungry and covetous and the awkward bump of their teeth speaks to how much Dean needs this, how much he needs him.  Castiel straddles him, squeezes lithe legs against the sharp cut of aching hips, gives way to Dean’s tongue and embraces it in the landscape of his mouth.  He nibbles Dean’s lower lip, pauses to suck at the red wetness forming around the split that mars it, shudders at the taste of him.  Through the softness of his well-worn cotton shirt he feels the hard column of Dean’s cock, snug between the alley of their stomachs.  Any other night he might shove Dean to the mattress, might pin his shoulders, might bare his teeth before sinking them into the chords of the other man’s neck.  Any other night he might mistake the sheen of Dean’s green eyes for the gloss of painkillers, but tonight he knows Dean struggles to hold back more than desire.  So he closes his own eyes cups his hands along the side of Dean’s face and draws their lips together, lets Dean taste the tang of his own lifeblood, bites frantically at his searching tongue, melds them into one.  

 

Dean tilts his hips, presses his groin desperately against Castiel’s flesh, grunts and gasps, and when Castiel pulls away, sees the quiet tension Dean tries to hide from his eyes, Castiel knows he can’t give in, knows he can’t rut against him.  Knows he should quell his own desire as it rises greedily in the small space between them.  And, though Castiel floats through most of his day chasing the next high, here he is in control.  Here, he is in charge.

 

There are times when Castiel wants nothing more than to hold Dean and pull him inside himself.  He sometimes dreams of his wings, of unfurling them against a backdrop of lightning and sparks and then tucking them around Dean, holding him close.  Castiel yearns for this, wonders why he never took the opportunity when he was angelic and full of hope and purpose, wonders how to tell Dean the things he desires that have nothing to do with lust.  But tonight he is only human and he wants Dean exposed, so he winds his hands into the thick cloth of Dean’s canvas coat and flips it back, peeling it off of Dean’s shoulders, unhooking his arms from the sleeves.  Dean is a man of many layers, but without the coat, Castiel can see more bloodstains, glimmering wetly through flannel and a tee, so he repeats the process, ignores the pleading in Dean’s eyes as he slips the soft cotton over a thick watch and off Dean’s wrist.  

 

“Cas,” Dean says and his voice is heavy, it nestles between them like a living creature.  “Cas,” he repeats, twists his hands in the stretch of Castiel’s shirt.  Castiel pauses, worries he’s misjudged, worries he’s overstepped the boundaries of whatever this is, but then the line of Dean’s mouth tenses, his chin ripples for an instant and when he finally gasps, “Please,” his voice cracks with the strain of all the things for which he doesn’t know how to ask.

 

Dean goes silent and Castiel can feel the conflict bubble through him.  This isn’t what Dean wanted--he wanted Castiel’s hands on his wrists, wanted him heavy on his back, wanted to be restrained because Dean has not known what to do with freedom for a very long time.  And yet, Dean craves the soft flutter of Castiel’s hands as they turn over his forearm and tickle over the scrape of gravel burn, but Dean can’t sit through this type of tenderness unless he’s been commanded, unless this is what Castiel wants and demands.  So Dean wants to shove Castiel off, wants to find a mason jar of caustic and effective moonshine, wants to disappear into the darkness crowding the cabin walls, but instead he sits, takes deeps breaths that should soothe him and looks away from the softness in Castiel’s blue eyes, because tonight Dean is not fearless, he is not strong.

 

Castiel turns back to Dean’s arms, pulls them gently from his shirt, turns them upward so he can feel Dean’s pulse under the pressure of his grasp.  He is fascinated by the scrapes and cuts, how they weep blood and radiate heat.  He has a reverence for the glow around their edges, the gentle swelling that pulls at their skin.  This comes from the time when he couldn’t feel pain, when he was awed by the ways his Father gave His creations to heal.

 

He starts at Dean’s fingertips, still stained, and takes an index finger slowly into his mouth, lets it rest in the curve of his tongue before he scrubs over the knuckles and releases it to start on the next digit, smiling at the broken moan escaping Dean, humming into the slide of Dean’s wet finger against the stubble of his cheeks, painting him red and brown.  Dean’s lower knuckles are scabbed and swollen, from punching something,anything and everything, and Castiel kisses each in turn before biting at the soft flesh of those wrists and lazily licking up a forearm, cool hands leading with gentle pressure, streaks of red trailing damply behind. Dean tastes briney and alive, like the ocean. He exhales, deflates, and finally meets Castiel’s eyes, Castiel’s brows furrowed under unruly curls.  

 

Dean’s never been a fan of begging, but he begs now, “Cas.  Cas, please.”  Castiel can hear the fear behind it, a longing unspoken and unmet, the terror that this is another thing he cannot have.  Castiel prods his shoulder, lays him on the bed with no force or restraint.  Feet still flush to the floor, Dean surveys the knots in the pine boards of the ceiling, looking away because Castiel can see too much.  Because he doesn’t know what he’ll do if Castiel stops.

 

Castiel maneuvers himself between the V of Dean’s legs and feathers his fingers to the hem of Dean’s shirt, fanning them between the skin and the cotton, and rolling it up.  Dean’s stomach and chest are a patchwork of battlescars, raw and sore.  It’s been months since Dean’s been unblemished.  He never allows himself to heal between missions and Castiel sometimes wonders if he even knows how. For now, Castiel’s fingers trace over dusky lines and mauve contusions, gathering the shirt as he goes, until Dean huffs with impatience and hauls it over his head, cringing at the movement.  Castiel, immediately sees why; Dean’s left shoulder is covered in hasty field dressing, gauze soaked and red, medical tape mostly coming unstuck.  

 

“What happened?” Castiel asks.  He pulls gently on Dean’s chin, forcing him to meet his gaze and tilts his head toward the shoulder.

 

“Knife,” Dean wars with his need, holds himself taut under pale hands, “It’s not deep, Cas.  It’s fine.”

 

Castiel’s fingers trace the edge of the bandage.  He picks at a loose edge and lifts it off, careful to watch Dean’s face for distress.  

 

“May I?” He asks, peeling the dressing back, surveying the still open wound, silently wincing in sympathy.

 

“It’s too much, Cas,” Dean says, but the words are a struggle and Cas holds his chin steady so he can’t look away.

 

“I don’t have to,” Cas offers, but he licks his lips as he looks at the wound. Dean closes his eyes and Castiel watches wetness pool against the raised bruise on his cheek.  He leans forward and sucks it off, probing gently at the broken skin, raking his tongue against permanent stubble and Dean gasps and keels his hips upward, straining, searching.

 

“Cas,” he begs, eyes suddenly open, “Please, please.”  The words are whispers, humid breath clouding Castiel’s ear and Castiel deepens his kiss, molds his hands to Dean’s chest as he pushes away.

 

“Don’t stop,” Dean rasps as they separate and Castiel’s eyes go dark and feral.

 

Castiel keeps his medical kit under the bed.  Sometimes the only time he can clean Dean up is when he’s asleep, snoring and sprawled.  He drags his hand down Dean’s chest to his warm and supple belly, Dean grasping and tugging as Castiel coos softly, “Just a moment.  I’m right here.”

 

The kit opens with a creak and Castiel rifles through it and stands.

 

“I won’t hurt you,” he tries to reassure Dean. “Not tonight.”

 

They both know this is a half-truth when Castiel soaks fresh gauze with rubbing alcohol, but Castiel wants Dean to know this is different.  Still, Dean hardens his face, until Castiel leans forward and mouths the far edges of the wound, where the skin becomes tender and fiery.  He worships it, massages it with lips and tongue, feels himself ache and harden as Dean’s breath catches in his throat and then tumbles past his lips in frantic bursts. Dean shimmies to the edge of the bed so he can press his cock into the strength of Castiel’s leg.  Castiel feels the pull of Dean’s boxers against his thigh and leans his head back, puffing his excitement onto tender, open skin.  He tears himself away and cleans the wound, hands and fingers mimicking the motion of his tongue. Dean shirks from the touch and Castiel is tempted to press harder, tempted to watch the blood soak through layers of fresh bandages, but tonight he is a healer.  Tonight he is sympathetic and tender.  Tonight he dresses the wound and lays his hand over it gently, as if he could will his Grace back into being.  Maybe there’s just a speck left to remake Dean, he prays to empty air.  But even without Grace, Dean becomes pliable and loose under his hands, trusting Castiel’s hands to mend him.

 

Castiel moves on, allows his fingers to play over welts on his ribs and outline the graze of a bullet.  He sucks against the mark of a half-faded boot print and fingers the bites of the knife, dragging still flowing blood down Dean’s obliques, reveling in the slickness on his lips before he meets the crease below Dean’s belly and a tangle of coarse hair.

 

Castiel kneels, pressing red fingerprints into the softness of Dean’s thighs and draws his tongue along the slit of Dean’s cock.  He feels Dean’s legs tremble in response as he runs his lips downward, tongueing the base until Dean cries out and wraps his hands, still smeared and gorey through his hair.  Castiel grins wickedly as he finally takes Dean deeply,  moves a hand to cup his balls and feels the press of Dean’s thighs around his ears.  Dean burns with heat as he thrusts into Castiel’s mouth and he knows that Dean is already close, that he has been throbbing and aching for Castiel, for a chance to let go.  Through the rushing in his ears Castiel can hear Dean crying out, still begging, his voice choked and broken and his fists tugging at Castiel’s hair.  He’s desperate and needy and he urges, implores Castiel to swallow him, swallow him whole.  So Cas relaxes, opens himself as much as he can, allows Dean deeper than he’s ever been, ignores the taste of blood still on his lips for the salty, sour taste of come as Dean shakes and writhes, his climax sweeping through him like a hurricane, leaving him mute as Castiel obeys and swallows, and swallows, and swallows.  And then Dean’s hands haul Castiel upward and Castiel can see the pain sparking in his vision but Dean will not be deterred as he drags him into his lap, thumbs clasping against high cheekbones and drinking Castiel in, breath frantic in his open mouth as they tumble, into bed, Dean rolling deftly over Cas.

 

Dean holds the kiss for a long moment, before he slithers downward, hands reaching for Castiel, hard and ready, dick peeking through his boxers and Castiel pines for this, hungers for touch.  But he pulls Dean back into the bed, strokes his hands through still dirty hair and shakes his head, “Not tonight.”  

  
And Dean, rubbery and shattered in the aftershock, collapses into the nook of Castiel’s neck, covers him and clings to him.  Castiel’s hands massage down his back, soothing, deep strokes against taut muscle and they cleave together, huddled under a swinging light bulb until Castiel’s chest is damp with tears and blood has dried on their intertwined hands.


End file.
